Messages

1

Programming / Re: My language

« on: March 20, 2018, 10:18:56 PM »

Code: [Select]

repeat 10
   repeat 10
     print "I've called Krice an imbecile" repeat.value "time(s)"

Fun language, Krice. The best thing is that I don't know what the output of my program is even though it is based on one of the simplest and best known programming constructs there is.

2

Programming / Re: [coding] TomeNET needs your help to find a bug! :D

« on: March 09, 2018, 03:14:05 PM »

I am surprised to see that this code panhandling thread continues a month later.

@getter77: PWMangband seems to have licensing issues as well. I recall the developer of that variant calling tomenet "unplayable" 10 years ago, which shows at least some of the critical perspective lacking here. It seems to be closer to vanilla angband than tomenet, which of course brings in the issues of vanilla that tomenet has addressed. From what I can tell, PWMangband doesn't address the conversion of offline game time to online real time or its interactions with the instantaneous nature of angband effects.

As to tangar's posturing about tomenet being the hardest game around, he has not tried my version of nethack where monsters do quadruple damage. I don't care how many weeks you think about your next move, quad damage is quad damage. Of course, given the complexity of mushroom patch hack, I wouldn't expect a large following. None of you normal damage scrubs can handle the intensity of my perfect version of nethack.

3

Programming / Re: [coding] TomeNET needs your help to find a bug! :D

« on: January 27, 2018, 03:48:52 AM »

Your screenshot shows nothing of the kind. It's just a still frame showing no flashing behavior at all. What I notice more than anything is the lack of any new display showing descriptions of monsters visible, which would be the obvious solution to the issue I raised. It seems pretty clear to me that nothing has happened.

As to why I am so down on tomenet, it's a bad game that could be an okay game but remains bad not because it's hard to change but because the people involved in it are committed to bad ideas. It occupies a space where something good or at least okay could exist, but rather than show how a multiplayer or realtime roguelike could work, it shows every way those concepts don't work and gives the impression that nothing can be done. In my opinion, the existence of an example like tomenet is worse than nothing, the tiny audience it has attracted over 20 years notwithstanding. It takes a good idea, done successfully by commercial game developers (e.g. in the diablo series, path of exile, etc.) and does it unbelievably poorly.

Now you might ask why I don't roll up my sleeves and make the changes myself if it's so easy. The short answer is that tomenet violates the licenses of the networking code/libraries it uses. I'm not going to get involved with something that it seems to me could blow up at any moment.

4

Programming / Re: [coding] TomeNET needs your help to find a bug! :D

« on: January 25, 2018, 04:13:36 AM »

So I have to ask, has producing 95% of tomenet-related online writing in the past three years actually driven nontrivial traffic to your youtube channel?

The fact that one dude can produce such a volume of posts about tomenet over such a long period of time with almost zero response speaks to how deeply unpopular the game is.

5

Programming / Re: [coding] TomeNET needs your help to find a bug! :D

« on: January 23, 2018, 11:08:40 AM »

I think it's odd that your response to a pretty specific complaint is that the game has become better overall, rather than speaking to the particular issue. My guess is that nothing has changed there.

It may be true that they have made improvements to tomenet, but this is not saying much. There was an alternate version of the game when I was playing that did simple things like making basic items more available in shops so that shop scumming was a less central aspect of the game and that already represented a significant improvement. Similar very simple things, such as removing food, fuel, curses and identification, along with the massive volume of useless items generated to prop up the identification minigame would also massively improve the game. Identification in tomenet is shockingly tedious and bizarre, completely disrupting any kind of flow to the game.

Tomenet, even ten years ago, had correctly nerfed a lot of the worst angband mechanics, such as teleport other, teleport level, *destruction* among others, which in all my history of tomenet criticism I never gave them proper credit for. But the fact is they keep plenty of the worst stuff, in particular instantaneous teleportation, monster summoning, high damage breath weapons, and 31 flavors of elemental damage, and compound them by putting these instantaneous effects into a real time setting. It is such a simple-minded transcription of turn-based mechanics into real time it's mind boggling anyone can take it seriously enough to play.

6

Programming / Re: [coding] TomeNET needs your help to find a bug! :D

« on: January 21, 2018, 02:05:59 AM »

The numbers you list mostly correspond to control characters or other non-printable ASCII/extended ASCII codes. I would speculate that the numbers you are using to identify tiles are being fed through something that interprets them as codes of that type.

From my memory of tomenet, the map part of the interface was reasonably legible and clear with ordinary text and color. The main problem was flashing "colors" were frequently indistinguishable and the only means for positively identifying some of these monsters was using the L command, direct from angband, which is totally unsuitable for a realtime game and, frankly, an insult to the player. Perhaps the interface has become more expressive and usable in this way in the last 10 years, though the developers seemed very committed to this sort of backwardness last time I spoke with them.

7

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Doryen/The Chronicles of Doryen/Doryen Arena/pyromancer? What's the deal?

« on: December 08, 2017, 11:20:07 PM »

Are you posting on a forum to complain about posting on a forum?

8

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Re: Doryen/The Chronicles of Doryen/Doryen Arena/pyromancer? What's the deal?

« on: November 29, 2017, 01:51:02 PM »

It looked like there was something playable, like this pyromancer thing, but I didn't see how to get it and thought someone who follows these things more closely might have already tried it.

Indeed, my interest was in seeing the specifics of an "imaginative" failed design.

9

Traditional Roguelikes (Turn-based) / Doryen/The Chronicles of Doryen/Doryen Arena/pyromancer? What's the deal?

« on: November 19, 2017, 12:11:49 PM »

These guys who were developing The Chronicles of Doryen, best known today as the game libtcod was developed for, pretty much called it quits, they say, because the combat system they came up with was too tedious to build a game around and they couldn't come up with anything better.

My question is: What was this combat system? Has anyone actually played the game?

10

Design / Re: I need opinion on this map design

« on: November 13, 2017, 09:37:03 AM »

The layouts look nice regarded as pictures. Functionally I have the following concerns:

1. Lots of corridors and choke points.
2. Lots of circuits, i.e. closed paths encircling walls.
3. Meandering and aimless features.

Corridors and other 1-tile choke points usually have a dominant tactical effect if the combat system is remotely reasonable (i.e. there is a significant amount of movement during combat). You can build combat around trying to mitigate that effect, but it's better just not to generate 1-tile chokes.

Circuits are a problem because they open the possibility of limitless kiting and other repetitive nonsense. Unless you have a very tight time limiting mechanic this will lead to tedious combat tactics in a reasonable combat system. It's especially problematic if you have regeneration of hp or mp-like resources over time during combat.

In some of your images you have zigzagging corridors and all have a lot of dead ends. Unless there's some particular reason to have a dead end, you shouldn't generate them. They are boring and become tedious if there are a lot of them. The same is true of zigzags. The maps don't really have any structure or direction to them. The standard excuse is to claim, falsely, that structure and direction are at odds with randomization or that it is common throughout the genre to generate fairly homogeneous maps. In reality, these are arguments for low standards.

The maps have good density and screen usage, but you could do with less total floor space, if these maps are representative of actual levels. I would suggest introducing negative space, areas filled with wall, to provide a bit of form and keep levels to a more manageable size and complexity.

11

Design / Re: UI design (WIP)

« on: October 12, 2017, 12:36:00 PM »

"You don't have to design the interface if you let the player do it for you!"



I don't flatter myself that flaming Krice accomplishes anything. It's a purely libidinal impulse and outside of any amusement anyone else gets out of it, which I recognize is limited at best, no more useful than the equally libidinal posts of people with some photoshop mockup and an ambition to someday make a half-assed angband (going on 27 years, baby!) clone with their name on it. People who are after nothing more than flattery or, if that isn't forthcoming, a righteous bitch about how mean people are on the internet.

Maybe Slash throws out the two-headed ogre and says "Hey guys, come back, I'm moderating now!" Then we'd be back to high-fiving over stuff that mostly sucks and more voluminous indulgence of crap like the OP.

12

Design / Re: UI design (WIP)

« on: October 11, 2017, 11:45:24 AM »

Sure, Krice.

Now that we've gotten all this nonsense out of the way, it's time we discussed my consulting fee.

13

Design / Re: UI design (WIP)

« on: October 09, 2017, 10:25:45 PM »

Sure, I can do better. But it is the Krice forum. He's the only regular poster. Those rules, to a first approximation, say nothing more than that you have to deal with Krice in a civilized manner.

Why do you think anyone is going to "do better" when their reward is they get another Krice comment to look at? That sort of self-flagellation hasn't been getting a lot of takers, has it?

14

Design / Re: UI design (WIP)

« on: October 09, 2017, 01:43:34 PM »

You're the only regular poster, Krice, and you don't have anything to show for decades of this horseshit. As for me, it's true I don't have any personal projects that I would like to promote and I am not interested in discussing anything else I am involved in with you and whatever dipshit comes in here off reddit.

I give someone a better run down than they're likely to get elsewhere on their game project, which is never going to be anything but a couple of bitmaps on imgur anyway, and I gotta deal with your dumb ass arguing with me, telling him he can put the Dow Jones industrial average in his game interface or that his game has to have bananas to be a roguelike or whatever stupid shit I didn't even bother reading. I'm "trolling." I guess on the Krice forum, that's what this is.

15

Design / Re: UI design (WIP)

« on: October 09, 2017, 05:36:20 AM »

This forum is inactive because it is a place people like mrmoxie here come to chit-chat about half-baked non-projects with Krice, a person who has no actual ideas or knowledge about anything.

If people on reddit thought that the text spacing didn't bear mentioning, that's a pretty strong indication of the value of feedback from "redditors." This whole "I chose the 'font' in my design mock up at random, you can't take that as part of my design intention" thing is really incredible. I've some dumb shit on this forum but that may take the cake. It's not even about the font, jesus.